Thursday, November 10, 2011

Defunct Local Band Profile Series: SIGHdEFECT & Mugwort

It's that time of the month again, as it's time for this month's Defunct Local Band Profile! As always, this monthly feature post outlines and profiles a defunct or inactive local metal/hard rock band, and to avoid any bias, the band(s) in question is/are picked via random selection. That said, for a second time in three months, the band I initially chose didn't have substantial enough information to populate a full post on it's own, so I've added another band with minimal info to fill things out, and for the first time, a two band profile in this series is split among the Twin Saults! So, what should you know about this month's profiled bands? Read on below! (Updated on August 27th, 2013)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------SIGHdEFECT

Audio/Video:SIGHdEFECT reportedly were working on a debut album circa early 2002, but I'm not certain if it was released. Lyrics for 5 songs are also posted on the band's official website, which were all likely to have been on their CD. That said, no media of theirs exists in a publically available form, but most of the band's members have recorded and released original material in recent years with their later bands. If I had to guess, I'd assume that Jason Bourcier's musical output is the closest to SIGHdEFECT in sound, but I could be wrong.

Info/Analysis: Pronounced "side effect", SIGHdEFECT was launched by drummer Matt Waples in late 2001, and they quickly gained local success in the early 2000s, including opening for Chore during their run. Influenced by bands ranging from Metallica & Slipknot to Limp Bizkit & Coal Chamber, they played a heavy metal style with a "creepy feel" to it, even comparing their concerts to watching a very creepy movie. Information is largely scarce on SIGHdEFECT, but their website was last updated in 2002, and I presume they dissolved by 2003. However, most of the band's members remained active in local punk & metal acts, so go check them out! I'm curious to hear SIGHdEFECT (especially for Justin singing heavier stuff), and the members definitely have the pedigrees to rock pretty hard, but I wonder what happened to them? Give their stuff a look at the above links, and hopefully some material emerges down the road!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Mugwort

Genre: Metal

Hometown:Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan & Kyoto, Japan

Musicians: (This information is incomplete. E-mail me at robertfigures@hotmail.com if you have any additions or corrections!)Bob "Orb Hearthstone" Helsten (Powerslug, Toast), vocalsDa-Ko (Grin Outside, Grin Inside), all instrumentsInfo/Analysis:Little info is posted online about Mugwort. Only visibly active in 2008, they're presumably named after the mugwort plant, and the image used on their MySpace page is from the anime series Cowboy Bebop. They're also friends with a few local metal acts, including a user named Andy Bord with the same display picture. According to conversations with singer Bob Helsten, this was a studio project he briefly did with Japanese metal musician Da-Ko, who has some very solid metal work you can check out at the above links. Likewise, Mugwort's only posted song, entitled "Hunters Moon", is also very promising! A lengthy epic metal track similar to his earlier work in I.S.O.M. & End of Existence, it shows off Bob's melodic vocals well while also including some nice orchestral elements and a some affecting softer parts mixed in with very heavy riffs and a really cool guitar solo! It'd be nice to see Bob & Da-Ko revive Mugwort, but for now, check out "Hunter's Moon" below, and more from both of them at the above links!

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I hope you guys liked this month's profiles! Next month will be the first month of our new format for post division between the twin Saults, which will be like this for each month: 1-1-1-1-1, due to a growth in Sault Michigan band proportion, so things are more even, but we'll still occasionally profile two Sault Ontario bands consecutively. So which band is being profiled next month? Once again, we'll be profiling two, as once again, the first band I randomly picked didn;t have any material, so I've added a Sault Michigan band in a similar situation to round things out.

So for our final Defunct Local Band Profile of 2011, we'll look at defunct Sault Ontario metal band Garage Inc. (featuring future members of Blues Harvest, Thin Ice, and No Shadows Cast) and defunct Sault Michigan metal band Savage Roar (formerly Shishiku.) Hopefully you guys like them when they go up on or around December 10th! That's all for now, but stay tuned for weekend concert previews later tonight! Thanks everyone!